Phobia Treatment | Phobia Manchester | Fear Manchester

Manchester Psychotherapy, Counselling, NLP and EMDR

The initial cause of phobias can usually be traced back to experiences where the fight or flight response has become associated at an unconscious level with a particular trigger or stimulus, usually as the result of some emotionally charged event. When you are re-presented with the trigger, for example, seeing a spider, the associated response is triggered, most commonly resulting in feelings of anxiety, fear and panic.

Attempting to deal with a phobia at a conscious level is often ineffective. This is because phobias happen automatically below the level of conscious awareness. In fact many people are fully aware of how illogical their phobic reactions are, but no matter how much they attempt to consciously control and rationalise them, the reaction still occurs.

It is important to be sure about what you are actually afraid of, as many people assume they have a phobia, when in fact they may have an anxiety or a panic disorder, which needs to be treated differently to a phobia. Usually most people with a phobia will also have some anxiety related to the phobia.

Phobia Treatment

The most complete and effective way to eliminate or reduce the phobia is to change the association between the stimulus and the response, so that the stimulus triggers a different response instead.

Psychotherapy, NLP, EMDR, and Clinical Hypnotherapy can be extremely effective at treating phobias, because they deal directly with the associations. Phobias with a single specific trigger, for example fear of spiders, can often be dealt with very quickly in 1 to 4 sessions. More complex phobias, anxieties and panic disorders, like public speaking phobia, and social phobia, with more triggers and complexity, will require much more time, so around 8 to 12 sessions or more are often required.

Common fears, anxieties and phobias: fear of public speaking, performance anxiety, fear of rejection, fear of enclosed spaces, fear of success, fear of driving, fear of bridges, fear of crowds, bird phobia, spider phobia, fear of flying, fear of vomit, fear of panicking, fear of fear.

If, you would like to make an appointment, please contact me by Click here to email or phone me on 0161 881 4333.

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Corporate Work

My services can also be combined and tailored to your group or corporate needs, and range from EAP (Employee Assistance Programme – one to one therapy, counselling or coaching sessions) through to bespoke group training, workshops, and outdoor activities and retreats.